McDonald’s Down: Outages Affect Fast-Food Restaurants Worldwide
Operations at McDonald’s, the global fast-food chain, have been interrupted by widespread IT system outages. These outages have affected stores in multiple countries across the Asia-Pacific region and beyond, leaving staff unable to process electronic orders and customers frustrated.
System Failure Causes Nationwide Closures
McDonald’s Japan announced on Friday afternoon that they were experiencing a “system failure” and that “many stores nationwide are temporarily closed.” Photos taken in restaurants in Singapore and Australia show self-ordering kiosks and order terminals displaying “out of service” messages. Customers have also reported being unable to order through the McDonald’s app.
Reports from Australia state that some stores have shut down entirely, while others are only accepting cash orders. In Singapore and Japan, McDonald’s employees have resorted to accepting cash payments and calculating orders manually on paper.
Apologies and Resolutions
A spokesperson for McDonald’s Australia issued an apology, stating, “We are aware of a technology outage currently impacting our restaurants nationwide and are working to resolve this issue as soon as possible. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank customers for their patience.”
McDonald’s Corporation, headquartered in the U.S., confirmed that the issue is not related to a cybersecurity event. They announced they are working on resolving the problem but did not provide further details on the extent of the outage or when it will be fully fixed.
Hours after this story was published, McDonald’s publicly shared a statement attributed to Global Chief Information Officer Brian Rice. The statement explained that the outage was caused by a third-party provider during a configuration change and that it was quickly identified and corrected. The statement also mentioned that many markets are already online, while others are in the process of coming back online.
Global Impact
The IT issue has affected McDonald’s stores in New Zealand, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and China. Customers in Hong Kong were asked to order directly with staff at the restaurant due to a computer system failure, while Taiwan suspended its delivery service for system maintenance. In China, the hashtag “McDonald’s crashed” trended on Weibo, with millions of views on related posts.
Similar technical problems with orders were reported on social media and the Downdetector platform in Austria, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Resolving the Issue
Since its establishment in 1940, McDonald’s has become one of the world’s largest fast-food chains, with over 40,000 stores globally, including more than 12,000 across Asia and more than 1,000 in Australia. Global Chief Information Officer Brian Rice expressed the company’s commitment to the reliability and stability of their technology, stating, “What happened today has been an exception to the norm, and we are working with absolute urgency to resolve it.”
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